Advise on 2 to 2,5K€ setup from scratch after trying pm7000n

[alvaromari83]

Hello everyone! I would like to ask advice and inputs for a start from scratch stereo system for my living room setup. First... My Needs and key points are as follow:

- living room is 30 sq meters, 3 meter aprox listening distance and 4,5 meter between speakers. Positioning is awfuly restricted and can barely get 20cm from back wall and 15 from side wall un left speaker. Speakers Will be toed in 45° almost.

- listen to: classical, heavy metal, acoustic, 80s, ambient and electronic... Mostly everything but reaggeton like stuff...

- Will be placed on TV desk, Next to the internet and lan connection, so Ethernet is at hand.

- Main source would be streaming services, preferible no lossy. Got tidal and Amazon música hd trial right now, but Will choose one of them eventually. I'm heavily biased by a nice ui like spotify or tidals, so the Connect feature of them for me is great.

- Multiroom to Stream source to other house zones active speakers will be welcome. Do not have those yet but Will have un short future.

- Will be used with TV as well, but no real plans for HT, just wanna improve nasty TV audio. HDMI ARC capability would be nice but found nothing including that.

- Will have a turntable 4m far, so phono input actually useless, Will need a dedicate phono stage.


This said, if tries a first all in one setup with a deal for a marantz pm7000n + wharfedale evo 4.4 floorstanders. Result, great sound, may be more bass than my neighbours would tolerate. Failure1: totally hate heos! Can not stand it and not seems like tidal Connect would be supported soon. Failure2: my cat wanted to sharp its nails with the lower cone... So seems like i can only go the boolshelves way + future sub if needing more bass.

After that, i'm currently thinking of going for the bookshelf versión of the speakers: wharfedale evo 4.2, would be cat-safe and still fill the place and not hard to position to still get good sound stage with walls near. And for the amp, checked a combo of the Cambridge Audio CXA61 amp +cxn(v2) streamer for 1430€ deal now. (deal ended yesterday )

So the questions:

- Is It a good match of amp CXA61 + speakers (whaferdale evo 4.2)? Other shop not shelling wharfedale brand told me to go for Dalí (oberon or opticon) instead.

- is the CXA61 enough for the boolshelves evo 4.2? I assume so.... The pm7000n 60w was moving the bigger evo 4.4 nicely and could barely get louder than 50% volume. Any other reason to go for CXA81 instead, appart from extra watts?

- CXA61+cxn v2 combo is a good parking, even when one of the dacs is gonna be wasted? My main catch for the cxn V2 is the tidal Connect + Chromecast multirrom + spotify Connect and maybe future roon multiroom and nice UI.

- Or Maybe is worth it go a totally different approach to spend money on a dedicate amp (i.e. musical fidelity m2si) + cxnv2 ir even a separate dac and a roon Server+endpoint streamer in a box (i'm DIY savvy but maybe even if roon app is great and goces multiroom this is nosense having no ripped collection of music and everything vía streaming services now...).

Also been checking out something with HDMI ARC for TV control volume (not possible with toslink), but did not find anything within my budget (naim or ca Edge is way too much for me).

So as you can see i'm suffering the tiranny of choice...

Hope you can help me a little with so much doubt for my first start from scratch setup....

Thank you in advance!!

KR!

Alv.

 

[rainsoothe]

Hi. The Evo 4.2 can be a bit polite, and Marantz might be considered a "not-so-ideal" partner. Actually, Cambridge Audio might really be a great duo to complement them. But most software is pretty bad, so don't expect a huge leap from Heos (although the CXN v2 is Roon compatibile ATM, I think). Alternatively, you could check out the Naim Atom with the Wharfedales, or some Acoustic Energy stuff, or Focal Chora. Don't be fooled by the Naim's power rating, it's really strong. In any case, try to audition.

 

[TheJoker]

KEF LS50 Wireless 2

 

[Deleted member 116933]

Why not also look as Sonos play 5s. Or a pair of phantom reactors.

No need for all the boxes then.

No great loss over Arc IMO flaky as all hell. Much prefer a good solid connection like tosklink

 

[matthewpiano]

I can recommend a Bluesound Node 2i as the streaming front end. I've tried most of the streaming platforms, and I find BlueOS to be the best. The Node 2i sounds good too, and will make a good partner for any good amp.

If you would prefer to keep things more simple, you could go for the PowerNode 2i, which combines the streaming platform with a very capable digital amplifier. I use one upstairs and it produces a very impressive sound.